Creationist: We’ll Only Be Impressed If You Find Transitional Fossils in the Precambrian

Once upon a time, creationists challenged evolutionists by pointing to the lack of transitional fossils. For a century and more, creationists continued to claim that there were no transitional fossils even as transitional fossils trickled in. We’ve now reached a point, it would seem, where denial is no longer adequate. There are transitional fossils. Some creationists, as a result, are changing their argument

In an article titled “They Are Digging in the Wrong Place!” Answers in Genesis’ Bodie Hodge argues that it doesn’t matter how many transitional fossils evolutionists find, because the rock layers they’re looking in were laid down by the flood, and everyone who can read Genesis knows that there were already humans on earth before the flood.

No, really.

Typically, evolutionists are searching for alleged human missing links in the upper strata like Pleistocene and Pliocene…

In a general sense, evolutionists look for alleged dinosaur-to-bird missing links in the Cretaceous and Paleocene…

But here is the problem. The rock layers from Cambrian to Miocene—at least mapped in the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4)—were from the Flood. Miocene and Eocene rock is intricately part of the makeup of the mountains of Ararat, as is Cretaceous and Triassic (many times inverted, lying above the Miocene and Eocene). Since that time, the upper strata are post-Flood strata—such as Ice Age layers and recent volcanic flows.

I feel compelled to point out that scientists look for transitional fossils between humans and apes in specific layers and transitional fossils between dinosaurs and birds in specific other layers because that is where those fossils are found. It is not as though scientists aren’t also looking for things in other layers. They are. It’s just that the layers are sorted, and you’re not going to find a transitional fossil between humans and apes outside of specific layers.

This, by the way, is tremendous evidence for evolution and against young earth creationism—if those layers were all deposited by the flood, you would expect to find a jumble of fossils, not neat and tidy sorting. And yes, I know that creationists argue that larger creatures like dinosaurs sank in the waters of the flood and were buried deeper than lighter creatures like humans, but that doesn’t explain why baby dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs are always in those layers with them, or why even pollen is sorted, only occurring in specific layers.

Hodge even offers this neat little graphic:

But let’s read on to see what Hodge is arguing.

So when evolutionists say they found a transitional form between an ape and a human in Pliocene rock, creationists hardly flinch. Evolutionists are looking at the rock strata and the age of the earth incorrectly because humans were around long before that rock was ever laid down! Furthermore, humans existed when the Cambrian rock was laid down during the Flood. To go one more step, mankind had dominated the earth for over 1,600 years before the Cambrian rock was laid down!

When someone says that they found a transitional form between a dinosaur and a bird in the Paleocene, again, creationists hardly think twice. Both specimens died the same year in the same Flood and are not related. …

Birds were made on Day Five, which is a day before the dinosaurs; land animals, like dinosaurs, were made on Day Six. Having both buried in Flood sediment isn’t a big deal.

If you have to read that a few times to make sense of it, go ahead. It took me a few times too. Hodge’s argument appears to be that no transitional fossil found in the layers creationists claim were laid down by the flood can actually be a transitional fossil, because all of those creatures were killed at the same time and buried in the flood. Anything scientists find in those layers—however transitional it may look—by definition cannot be transitional.

Think about that for a moment. This is the logic behind Hodge’s title—scientists looking for transitional fossils in any layers that come after the Precambrian are “digging in the wrong place” because, in looking in these layers, they’re actually picking through flood sediment, all of which was laid down in the same roughly year-long period.

If you’re still with me, Hodge goes on:

If evolutionists want to get creationists to take notice, then they need to find all these alleged transitional forms in the pre-Cambrian (essentially pre-Flood) rocks. But keep in mind that we had over 1,600 years of erosion and rock strata where people and animals did coexist before the Flood.

Consider the evolutionists for a moment. Would they be convinced if a researcher found a body of a person preserved from the Mount St. Helens eruption and claimed it was the earliest human ancestor? Not at all, because that sediment came from a catastrophe that happened well after people were around. It is the same with the Flood and post-Flood sediment. It was formed after people, birds, whales, and all other creatures were around.

The point is that evolutionists keep digging in the wrong place, yet they wonder why we hardly take notice. Well . . . this is why.

Let me turn this around: Why don’t we find transitional fossils between apes and humans, or dinosaurs and birds, in the Precambrian? If Hodge is right and those transitional fossils are actually creatures that lived before the flood, why don’t we find fossils of these creatures—or fossils of anything other than shelled water-dwelling creatures? And why do we see evolution within the Precambrian, as the fossils change within those layers?

I could go on, but those who listen will already be convinced and those who won’t listen never will be. If nothing else, though, Hodge’s article is evidence of how far young earth creationists are willing to go to defend their claims, twisting themselves into pretzels with new explanations as evidence disproves their earlier arguments.

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